Editorial Policies

All articles are freely available and immediately accessible online upon publication.

Readers can study, download and/or print OPEN access articles without any cost.

Articles are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode), which permits the unrestricted, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the work is properly cited.

Bentham OPEN follows the single blind peer-review procedure for submissions of all manuscripts to its journals. It is the most common type of peer-reviewing, in which the identity of the reviewers is not disclosed to the authors of the submitted manuscript. The anonymity of reviewers allows for objective assessment of the manuscript and is also free from any influence by the authors on the reviewers’ comments.

All submitted articles are subject to an extensive peer review, in consultation with members of the journal's Editorial Board and independent external referees (usually three). All manuscripts are assessed rapidly and the decision taken by the journal's Editor-in-Chief based on all the peer reviewers’ comments, which are then conveyed to the author(s).
Submissions from the Editor-in-Chief will undergo independent peer-review and will be submitted to another Editor for his decision on acceptance.

All efforts are made to expedite the peer review process leading to timely publication.

Authors publishing with Bentham OPEN retain the copyright to their work.

Authors have the flexibility to publish a wide range of articles in a Bentham OPEN journal e.g. short communications, full-length research and review articles, as well as supplements, conference proceedings and case studies.

Human and Animal Rights: All clinical investigations must be conducted according to the Declaration of Helsinki principles. For all manuscripts reporting data from studies involving human participants, formal review and approval by an appropriate institutional review board or ethics committee are required.
For research involving animals, the authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the standards set forth in the eighth edition of Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals grants.nih.gov/grants/olaw/guide-for-the-care-and-use-of-laboratory-animals_prepub.pdf; published by the National Academy of Sciences, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.).

Authors must clearly state the name of the approval committee, highlighting that legal and ethical approval were obtained prior to initiation of the research work carried out on animals, and that the experiments were performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations stated below.

Compliance with the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (www.icmje.org) is recommended, in accordance with the patient’s consent for research or participation in a study for Bentham Publication as per the applicable laws and regulations regarding the privacy and/or security of personal information, including, but not limited to, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 ("HIPAA") and other U.S. federal and state laws relating to confidentiality and security of personally distinguishable evidence, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679 and member state implementing legislation, Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, India's Information Technology Act and related Privacy Rules, (together "Data Protection and Privacy Laws").

It is the responsibility of the author to ensure that:

Patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers must not be mentioned anywhere in the manuscript (including figures).

Authors are responsible for obtaining patient consent-to-disclose forms for all recognizable patients in photographs, videos, or other information that may be published in the Journal, in derivative works, or on the journal’s web site and for providing the manuscript to the recognizable patient for review before submission.

The consent-to-disclose form should indicate specific use (publication in the medical literature in print and online, with the understanding that patients and the public will have access) of the patient's information and any images in figures or videos, and must contain the patient's signature or that of a legal guardian along with a statement that the patient or legal guardian has been offered the opportunity to review the identifying materials and the accompanying manuscript.

If the manuscript has an individuals’ data, such as personal detail, audio-video material, etc., consent should be obtained from that individual. In case of children, consent should be obtained from the parent or the legal guardian.

A specific declaration of such approval and consent-to-disclose form must be made in the copyright letter and in a stand-alone paragraph at the end of the article especially in the case of human studies where inclusion of a statement regarding obtaining the written informed consent from each subject or subject's guardian is a must. The original should be retained by the guarantor or corresponding author. Editors may request to provide the original forms by fax or email.

All such case reports should be followed by a proper consent prior to publishing.

Editors may request that authors provide documentation of the formal review and recommendation from the institutional review board or ethics committee responsible for oversight of the study. The editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts that do not comply with the above-mentioned requirements. The author will be held responsible for false statements or failure to fulfill the above-mentioned requirements.

Non-identifiable Images: Anonymous images, that do not identify the individual directly or indirectly, such as through any identifying marks or text, do not require formal consent, for example, x-rays, ultrasound images, pathology slides or laparoscopic images.
If case of not obtaining consent, concealing the identity through eye bars or blurring the face would not be acceptable.

Appeals and Complaints: Generally, the editorial decisions are not reverted. However, authors who think that their manuscript was rejected due to a misunderstanding or mistake may seek an explanation for the decision. Appeals must give sound reasoning and compelling evidence against the criticism raised in the rejection letter. A difference of opinion as to the interest, novelty, or suitability of the manuscript for the journal will not be considered as an appeal. The EIC and other relevant editors will consider the appeal and the decision thereafter taken by the journal will be deemed final. Acceptance of the manuscript is not guaranteed even if the journal agrees to reconsider the manuscript, and the reconsideration process may involve previous or new reviewers or editors and substantive revision.
Authors who wish to make a complaint should refer them to the Editor-in-Chief of the journal concerned. Complaints to the Publisher may be emailed to info@benthamopen.net

Plagiarism Prevention: Bentham OPEN uses the iThenticate software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. iThenticate software checks the content against a database of periodicals, the Internet, and a comprehensive article database. It generates a similarity report, highlighting the percentage overlap between the uploaded article and the published material. Any instance of content overlap is further scrutinized for suspected plagiarism according to the publisher's Editorial Policies. Bentham OPEN allows an overall similarity of 20% for a manuscript to be considered for publication. The similarity percentage is further checked keeping the following important points in view: Low Text Similarity: The text of every submitted manuscript is checked using the Content Tracking mode in iThenticate. This mode ensures that manuscripts with an overall low percentage similarity (but which may have a higher similarity from a single source) are not overlooked. The acceptable limit for similarity of text from a single source is 5%. If the similarity level is above 5%, then the manuscript is returned to the author for paraphrasing the text and citing the original source of the copied material.
It is important to mention that the text taken from different sources with an overall low similarity percentage will be considered as a plagiarized content if the majority of the article is a combination of copied material. High Text Similarity: There may be some manuscripts with an overall low similarity percentage, but a higher percentage from a single source. A manuscript may have less than 20% overall similarity but there may be 15 % similar text taken from a single article. The similarity index in such cases is higher than the approved limit for a single source. Authors are advised to thoroughly rephrase the similar text and properly cite the original source to avoid plagiarism and copyright violation. Types of Plagiarism:
We all know that scholarly manuscripts are written after thorough review of previously published articles. It is therefore not easy to draw a clear boundary between legitimate representation and plagiarism. However, the following important features can assist in identifying different kinds of plagiarized content. These are:

Reproduction of others words, sentences, ideas or findings as one’s own without proper acknowledgement.

Text recycling, also known as self-plagiarism. It is the author’s use of a previous publication in another paper without proper citation and acknowledgement of the original source.

Poor paraphrasing, copying complete paragraphs and modifying a few words without changing the structure of original sentences or changing the sentence structure but not the words.

Verbatim copying of text without putting quotation marks and not acknowledging the work of the original author.

Properly citing a work but poorly paraphrasing the original text is considered as unintentional plagiarism. Similarly, manuscripts with language between paraphrasing and quoting are not acceptable. Authors should either paraphrase properly or quote and in both cases, cite the original source.

Higher similarity in the abstract, introduction, materials and methods, and discussion and conclusion sections indicates that the manuscript may contain plagiarized text. Authors can easily explain these parts of the manuscript in many ways. However, technical terms and sometimes standard procedures cannot be rephrased; therefore, Editors must review these sections carefully before making a decision.

Plagiarism in Published Manuscripts: Published manuscripts which are found to contain plagiarized text are retracted from the journal website after careful investigation and approval by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal. A ‘Retraction Note’ as well as a link to the original article is published on the electronic version of the plagiarized manuscript.

Copyrights: Authors who publish in Bentham OPEN journals retain copyright to their work. Submission of a manuscript to the respective journals implies that all authors have read and agreed to the content of the Covering Letter or the Terms and Conditions. It is a condition of publication that manuscripts submitted to a journal have not been published and will not be simultaneously submitted or published elsewhere.
Bentham OPEN (Licensor) grants the author(s) a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, and non-commercial perpetual license to exercise the rights in the article published as stated below:

The authors retain the copyright of their published article. They will also have the right to:

Reproduce the article, to incorporate the article into one or more collective works, and to reproduce the article as incorporated in collective works;

Create and reproduce Derivative Works for educational purposes.

Distribute Copies

Any commercial application of the work, with prior agreement by the author, is exclusively granted to Bentham OPEN

Waiver: Authors grant to Bentham OPEN (licensor) the right to retain all revenue from commercial sales of the author's published article in a Bentham OPEN journal.

Bentham OPEN offers affordable article processing fees, ranking amongst the lowest as compared to those of other OPEN access journal publishers. An article-processing fee payable by the author/ author's institution applies for every accepted article, to cover the costs incurred by OPEN access publication. Members of Bentham OPEN are entitled to discounted article processing fees.

Authors can self-archive post prints of their published articles.

Authors can reproduce derivative works of the article for educational purposes and distribute its copies.

Publication Charges Policy: Bentham OPEN is committed to disseminating research and scholarly publications as widely as possible. It supports the principle that 'the results of research that have been publicly funded should be freely accessible in the public domain’ and therefore it encourages researchers to make their research available through Open Access (OA).
Open access publishing is not without costs. To provide open access, Bentham OPEN journals partly defray the expenses of peer review, journal production, and online hosting and archiving from authors and their research sponsors by charging a publication fee for each article they publish. The fees vary by journal. The publication fee details for each article published in Bentham OPEN in this journal is given below:Letters: The publication fee for each published Letter article submitted is US $750. Research Articles: The publication fee for each published Research article is US $960. Mini-Review Articles: The publication fee for each published Mini-Review article is US $750. Review Articles: The publication fee for each published Review article is US $1,060.
The following special discounts are offered to authors and editorial board members:

Authors from developing countries are entitled to 30% discount of their article publication fee submitted to any of the Bentham OPEN journals.

Authors from Bentham OPEN Member institutes are entitled to 30% discount of their article publication fee submitted to any of the Bentham OPEN journals.

Editorial Board Members and Editors of Bentham OPEN journals are allowed ONE free publication annually. Subsequent submissions from Editorial Board Members are published at 50% discount of the standard publication fee.

Waiver and additional discount requests are decided on the basis of author’s country of origin and quality of the submitted article. Editors and reviewers have no access to whether authors are able to pay; decisions to publish are only based on meeting the editorial criteria.

Errata or a Corrigenda and Corrections in Published Articles: Authors and readers are encouraged to notify the Editor-in-Chief if they discover errors in published content, authors’ names and affiliations or if they have reasons for concern over the legitimacy of a publication. In such cases, Bentham OPEN will publish an ERRATUM or a CORRIGENDUM, in consultation with the Editor-in-Chief and authors of the article, and/or replace or retract the article.

Article Withdrawal: Articles in Press (articles that have been accepted for publication or published as E-pub Ahead of Schedule but which have not been formally published with volume/issue/page information) that include errors, or are determined to violate the publishing ethics guidelines such as multiple submission, fake claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like, may be “Withdrawn” from the journal. Withdrawal means that the article files are removed and replaced with a PDF stating that the article has been withdrawn from the journal in accordance with Bentham OPEN Editorial Policies.

Article Retraction: Published articles (with volume/issue/page information), which may contain infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like, are retracted.

A retraction note titled "Retraction: [article title]" signed by the authors and/or the Editor-in-Chief is published in the paginated part of a subsequent issue of the journal and listed in the contents list.

In the electronic version, a link is made to the original article.

The online article is preceded by a screen containing the retraction note. It is to this screen that the link resolves; the reader can then proceed to the article itself.

The original article is retained unchanged with a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is “retracted.”

Concurrent publication/Simultaneous submission: It is a condition of publication that manuscripts submitted to the Bentham journal have not been published and will not be simultaneously submitted or published elsewhere. Plagiarism is strictly forbidden, and by submitting the article for publication the authors agree that the publishers have the legal right to take appropriate action against the authors, if plagiarism or fabricated information is discovered.
Abstracts and posters of conferences, results presented at meetings (for example, to inform investigators or participants about findings), results databases (data without interpretation, discussion, context or conclusions in the form of tables and text to describe data/information where this is not easily presented in tabular form) are not considered prior to publication.
Authors who wish to publish translations of the articles that have been published elsewhere should ensure that they have appropriate permission(s), indicate clearly that the material has been translated and re-published, and indicate clearly the original source of the material. The Editor-in-Chief may request copies of related publications if he/she is concerned about overlap and possible redundancy.

Disclaimer: Responsibility for the content published by Bentham OPEN in any of its journals, including any opinions expressed therein, rests exclusively with the author(s) of such content. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Bentham OPEN (on its own behalf, and on behalf of its staff and members of its editorial board) disclaims responsibility for any and all injury and/or damage (whether financial or otherwise) to persons or property, resulting directly or indirectly from any ideas, methods, instructions or products (including errors in the same) referred to in the content of any of Bentham OPEN journals. Any dispute arising, including any claim, shall be governed exclusively by the laws of the United Arab Emirates, as applied in the Emirate of Sharjah.

Endorsements

"Open access will revolutionize 21st century knowledge work and accelerate the diffusion of ideas and evidence that support just in time learning and the evolution of thinking in a number of disciplines."

Daniel Pesut(Indiana University School of Nursing, USA)

"It is important that students and researchers from all over the world can have easy access to relevant, high-standard and timely scientific information. This is exactly what Open Access Journals provide and this is the reason why I support this endeavor."

"Publishing research articles is the key for future scientific progress. Open Access publishing is therefore of utmost importance for wider dissemination of information, and will help serving the best interest of the scientific community."

Patrice Talaga(UCB S.A., Belgium)

"Open access journals are a novel concept in the medical literature. They offer accessible information to a wide variety of individuals, including physicians, medical students, clinical investigators, and the general public. They are an outstanding source of medical and scientific information."

Jeffrey M. Weinberg(St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center, USA)

"Open access journals are extremely useful for graduate students, investigators and all other interested persons to read important scientific articles and subscribe scientific journals. Indeed, the research articles span a wide range of area and of high quality. This is specially a must for researchers belonging to institutions with limited library facility and funding to subscribe scientific journals."

Debomoy K. Lahiri(Indiana University School of Medicine, USA)

"Open access journals represent a major break-through in publishing. They provide easy access to the latest research on a wide variety of issues. Relevant and timely articles are made available in a fraction of the time taken by more conventional publishers. Articles are of uniformly high quality and written by the world's leading authorities."

Robert Looney(Naval Postgraduate School, USA)

"Open access journals have transformed the way scientific data is published and disseminated: particularly, whilst ensuring a high quality standard and transparency in the editorial process, they have increased the access to the scientific literature by those researchers that have limited library support or that are working on small budgets."

Richard Reithinger(Westat, USA)

"Not only do open access journals greatly improve the access to high quality information for scientists in the developing world, it also provides extra exposure for our papers."

J. Ferwerda(University of Oxford, UK)

"Open Access 'Chemistry' Journals allow the dissemination of knowledge at your finger tips without paying for the scientific content."

Sean L. Kitson(Almac Sciences, Northern Ireland)

"In principle, all scientific journals should have open access, as should be science itself. Open access journals are very helpful for students, researchers and the general public including people from institutions which do not have library or cannot afford to subscribe scientific journals. The articles are high standard and cover a wide area."

Hubert Wolterbeek(Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands)

"The widest possible diffusion of information is critical for the advancement of science. In this perspective, open access journals are instrumental in fostering researches and achievements."

Alessandro Laviano(Sapienza - University of Rome, Italy)

"Open access journals are very useful for all scientists as they can have quick information in the different fields of science."

Philippe Hernigou(Paris University, France)

"There are many scientists who can not afford the rather expensive subscriptions to scientific journals. Open access journals offer a good alternative for free access to good quality scientific information."

"Open access journals have become a fundamental tool for students, researchers, patients and the general public. Many people from institutions which do not have library or cannot afford to subscribe scientific journals benefit of them on a daily basis. The articles are among the best and cover most scientific areas."

M. Bendandi(University Clinic of Navarre, Spain)

"These journals provide researchers with a platform for rapid, open access scientific communication. The articles are of high quality and broad scope."

Peter Chiba(University of Vienna, Austria)

"Open access journals are probably one of the most important contributions to promote and diffuse science worldwide."

Jaime Sampaio(University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Portugal)

"Open access journals make up a new and rather revolutionary way to scientific publication. This option opens several quite interesting possibilities to disseminate openly and freely new knowledge and even to facilitate interpersonal communication among scientists."

Eduardo A. Castro(INIFTA, Argentina)

"Open access journals are freely available online throughout the world, for you to read, download, copy, distribute, and use. The articles published in the open access journals are high quality and cover a wide range of fields."

Kenji Hashimoto(Chiba University, Japan)

"Open Access journals offer an innovative and efficient way of publication for academics and professionals in a wide range of disciplines. The papers published are of high quality after rigorous peer review and they are Indexed in: major international databases. I read Open Access journals to keep abreast of the recent development in my field of study."

Daniel Shek(Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)

"It is a modern trend for publishers to establish open access journals. Researchers, faculty members, and students will be greatly benefited by the new journals of Bentham Science Publishers Ltd. in this category."